


It's Complicated

by Off_TaskIntervention



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Angst, F/M, Getting Back Together, It's a coming of age story for the whole family except not really, M/M, Morty sticks up for himself, Past Relationships, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 13:17:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12841974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Off_TaskIntervention/pseuds/Off_TaskIntervention
Summary: Morty sells his services to other Ricks. It's not what you think.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote to explore the consensual adult relationship between Rick and Morty. Please note that this isn't a "coming together" story and takes place in the middle of them falling apart. Of course, I will always write a happy ending.
> 
> Feedback is forever appreciated and I always accept constructive criticism. :)

Morty had never felt more used in his life. It was like his insides had been taken apart and rearranged in the wrong order. He could feel himself breathing through his fingers, but it was probably the aftershocks of what he had just been through still vibrating his entire existence. Morty watched his fingers move on their own, twisting like tentacles and making sick, slick noises.

“Yeah, that’ll go away,” Rick said, not saying much else as he counted the money in front of him, unfolding bills from his lab coat. He looked distracted when cutting Morty his half and was virtually untouched from their adventure except from the vomit on the front of his shirt. Morty’s ears were ringing and the room was swinging like a pendulum, but he could still see that he was being cheated. Honestly, Morty should be accustomed to this point in the transaction.

“This isn’t what we agreed on,” Morty started, burping behind a closed fist as he held out the few wrinkled bills.

“Look M-morty,”Rick said, opening a portal behind him. “I know you expected ones and fives for your line of business, but its URP-EASier to pay in fifties. That’s one hundred and fifty.” Then, without further explanation he disappeared into the green portal.

“We agreed on two hundred!” Morty yelled to no one in the empty room. “Goddamn it,” He muttered, seeing that he’d been scammed, again, and left fifty dollars short for a text book. Logic told him that he’d probably gotten a concussion from the fall and he should be googling his symptoms. Reason said that at this rate he was going to die young anyways, so he might as well see if his mom had come back with groceries. By the time he had made it to the kitchen his limbs were settling into place again; his arms no longer shaking and his fingers no longer squirming on their own accord. The noise his knuckles had made locking into place made him gag and Morty searched for a can of ale just as a chair scraped the floor behind him. By the way the soda fizzed, popped, and spilled over his hand when he opened the tab Morty should have known who had been waiting for him.

“What dimension are you from?” Morty sighed, slurping the carbonation from the side of the can. This Rick wasn’t wearing his lab coat and instead had on a parka that made him look like Kenny from South Park.

“Your own, dipshit. Where the fuck have you been?” Rick asked, hands posed on his hips like a concerned grandfather with squinty, accusing eyes catching Morty’s unimpressed stare.

“The citadel. Where else?” Morty said, matching his question. He had helped two Ricks today. One wanted his floors mopped, the other wanted him to travel across six dimensions for a powder Morty had inherently rejected, throwing it up after he’d been told to _quit being a pussy, it was just intergalactic heroin._ He should have known better than to accept drugs from a Rick that didn’t serve himself first.

“W-well if you’re done whORIng yourself out, I have an a-adventure for us.” As if Morty had asked, Rick handed him a snow suit and a shovel.

Confused, Morty set his ale down and looked at the snow shovel. “I just cleared the driveway yesterday.” Rick slapped a hand over his face.

“Not the fucking drive—N-no, _Morty_. The body we took the other week, Morty.” Rick explained, putting a hand on his shoulder and shoving him in the direction of the garage. “Look, I got the thing I needed. I was going to just dump him in the river but I realized it will give the world a fucking conniption if he shows up forty years from now on someone’s lawn because Washington’s flooded. T-they’ll think it’s some _sign_ of extraterrestrial bullshit on our planet, Morty. They won’t _think_ to blame global warming. They’ll think our world’s falling apart due to alien contact and I-I-I refuse to be buried on a planet full of goddamn Jerrys.”

“He’s dead?!” Morty shouted, hands coming up to his ears in disbelief. “W-what—You said no one would get hurt!”

“I said I would use anesthesia to soothe your fucking inane morals so you’d help me. O-of course he’s dead. I took his liver! T-that’s like akin to the portion of the right brain on his planet, Morty. Did you just want me to leave him paralyzed? What the fuck kind of person would that make me, Morty?”

“We can’t just bury him in the backyard, Rick! T-that’s l-like _a serial killer_ thing to do. There’s already two bodies—”

“You think we’re going to bury him on Earth?” Rick interjected. “Oh my God, Morty. Did you not hear anything I said about—”

In that moment a portal opened behind them and a Rick tracked mud into the kitchen. Donning an apron and gardening gloves, this Rick was holding a potted fern that waved at Morty with one of its spindly leaves.

“Oh my God, what are you? Horticulturist me?” Rick demanded, looking like his composed Rick self but sounding, at best, annoyed from being interrupted.

“Morty,” Horticulturist Rick said, ignoring the other Rick. “I’ve got six biennial hybrid babies that need to be planted. I’ll pay you ten.”

“What? Are you serious—” Rick shouted, looking more angry than staggered by the request.

He’s surprised, however, when it’s Morty who interrupts this time with a short “fifty,” pausing to add “and you’ll help me get rid of a body.”

“J-jeez, Morty, you really should mention in your ad that you’re queer and over-priced. This is highway robbery here.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if your last self hadn’t ripped me off I wouldn’t have to financially extort you.”

“Morty, what—what is this?” [Morty’s] Rick sounded put out, putting the hood of his parka down. The two Ricks look almost identical and Morty’s head is beginning to spin again. “Is he like your ‘regular’? You have regular Ricks stopping by now?”

“It’s no big deal, Rick” Morty closed his eyes. “I prefer my ‘regulars’. They don’t fuck me over or make me snort intergalactic speed.”

“Is that why your eyes are glowing? Well, now at least I know you’re not willingly going with this d-bag.” It sounded like Rick was talking in a bubble now, not standing five feet from him. He feels sick and thinks that he can feel his fingers sprouting mouths and talking to him as he clutches the counter, but going with Horticulturalist Rick sounds like the better option when his Rick is just trying to use him as a crony to cover up another asinine misadventure. The Ricks are arguing at this point and Morty briefly wonders if he could pay any of the other versions of him to be the victim here instead so he could go lie down.

“Can we just go already?” Morty complained, ignoring the berating comments his fingers were giving him. God, with the noise I the room, he would think that his hands and armpits also had an opinion. Like twins, both Ricks turned to him with a snappy _“Which one?”_ making Morty  dread his plans to help another Rick tomorrow.

Snatching the portal gun from Horticulturist Rick, Morty brought up portal and stepped through with a terse _, “Who do you think?”_

 

 

 

 


	2. Meet Mortimer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, this chapter insinuates a previous under-aged relationship between Rick and Morty. Nothing is depicted is graphic and likely won't come up again in future chapters.

Watching Mortimer Smith grow into his name was like watching paint dry. It was hideously slow and ugly job, but it happened anyways with or without an audience. For a while, time was stagnant. Then the boy who had grew at the heels of Rick was suddenly bumping into him like a linebacker in the same amount of time it took to boil an egg. He was no longer lanky, but tall, with squared shoulders. The baby fat fell off his cheeks overnight and he obsessed over facial hair. Girls noticed him. Coaches noticed him. Rick noticed him, but for different reasons. Reasons like Morty no longer being around, because a nickname like his couldn’t possibly get shorter until other kids decided he was now “Mort.” Reasons also like the Washington High School coach wanting him as first runner for the track team. Somewhere around seventeen Morty got a reputation for being things like ‘studious’ and a real ‘team player’ and when it came time to cut dead weight to make room for his new popular persona, Morty shed 180 lbs.

Their relationship was short-lived. It was distasteful in every moral sense. It was wrong by every standard. It was invigorating before it burned out. Sexuality explored at such a young age, Rick didn’t expect much else coming from a boy that leapt at adventure. It was only rectified by every other time line in the multiverse. A relationship so intimate in the devotion either led to crossed lines or irreparable combustion. Sitting still wasn’t an option when you saw a person through new eyes and Rick had taken advantage of Morty’s contagious naivety because he didn’t want to listen to his own conscience, still built like a house with poor foundation underneath the flood of alcohol. It was rectified by parallel time lines in the multiverse. Common fate between Ricks and Mortys won over the sanction of social construct. Rick knew he really was sick the day he no longer saw Morty, his grandson, but Mort, the fucking boy next door that had everything coming to him. Good and bad. Rick liked to think he had some ownership in the young man Morty was becoming. Imagine his shock when he was tossed sideways to the curb like an empty bottle Morty’s eighteenth year. Like a sucker punch, he didn’t see it coming until it hit him clear in the jaw. Until Morty stopped showing up in the garage altogether and instead left invitations for after school pep rally and dates for track meets. It was low, slimy, and Rick couldn’t expect any less from his side of the gene pool. After all, he’d once stopped coming home, too.

\---

Christmas break ended on the first Monday of the new year. January hauled the snow from December plus a foot more into the Washington State. It was icy, unforgiving, and brought chapped lips to the Smith household. At least it did for Rick. Rick didn’t enjoy winter like he didn’t enjoy his morning coffee. The ritual of drinking it with eggs was like taking a heavy pill every day and he did his best to stare at the Earth Newspaper to keep his mind off the shit-brown tap water in his mug. Morty was there a second after Rick flipped the front page, panting like a dog with music still drifting from the plugs in his ears. Like he was another light socket in the wall, Ricks gruff “Good Morning,” went unnoticed by Morty, who was too busy trying to fold himself into the fridge than to exchange pleasantries. All the kid did these days was eat.

“A-hem, I said good morning,” Rick says, mock clearing his throat. As expected, it startled Morty into the present and Rick got a whole syllable for his trouble, a distracted “hey”, before going back to rummaging through the shelves, stacking jars, bottles and leftovers into his arms. Food on the counter, Morty had half the kitchen in front of him. From his track pants and sweat stained Gazorpazorpfield tee, Rick could only guess that he had been out running in this weather. Rick rolled his eyes at the cut-off sleeves meant to show the budding, barely-there muscle he’d seen Morty model before in the bathroom mirror. His hair was beginning to curl over his ears and Rick briefly wondered how hard the guy must have ran to get his head damp in the coldest season. Morty was a roids-popping egocentric in the making if he’d ever seen one.

“God, slow down,” Rick chides, watching two ham sandwiches and an apple disappear. “Your mom just went shopping and the roads are closed today.”  
“Oh, right,” Morty says back, sounding put out, as if he just remembered it was a district wide snow day. Most teenagers would have heard the news and rolled over in their beds. Morty fucking took the empty roads as an opportunity to train for distance.  
“Holy shit, I just got a two-word sentence before breakfast. Hey, Beth, come in here! We’re going for a record!” Rick calls, expecting no response and getting none. The act makes Morty roll his eyes to the ceiling and unplug a headphone. Rick thinks he might have sparked a miracle.

“You’re not funny,” Morty says, sounding like the average hormonal teenager who’s too big for jokes that aren’t from his school friends.  
Rick can’t resist and yells “Three!” into the empty hallway. Maybe he can get the other head phone out. Maybe Morty will sit down for once and eat his food instead of inhaling it. Rick tells him this breakfast fantasy.  
“I can’t sit down, Grandpa. I have plans today.”  
“Plans for when? You know, in this dimension, seven a.m. is usually reserved for sleeping. I’m pretty sure your kind doesn’t meet anywhere until noon. You know, the time when you can shove more garbage in your face.” Rick’s coffee is cooling, but he can’t find it in him to turn away and drink. He hasn’t held Morty’s attention this long since the holidays and he’s stunned into prodding this boy into talking like his mouth spills gold coins.  
Morty sighs, and for a second Rick thinks he’s pushed the envelope too far. Then, “What do you want, Grandpa?”

“Grandpa could use some company on a trip today,” Rick casually mentions. “Twenty minute adventure. In and out.”  
Again, a deep sigh. This time it comes squared up with a hard, deliberating look down at the counter. Rick knows he’s got him before Morty even mentions getting his jacket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was fun to write. I love writing moody teenagers because I'm not one. Let me know what you think!
> 
> All kudos go straight to my head and I appreciate every last comment. Please let me know if this format is appropriate, I'm self concious about my spacing.
> 
> Follow this story on my Tumblr: Offtaskintervention :)


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